Open Road Summer Hardcover – April 15, 2014

Very rarely do I call a book perfection. Even five star reads always have that something that irks me or that I dislike. But, there have been a couple that are pure perfection and I now have one more to add to that list, Open Road Summer. Bluntly put, it was perfect. It had all the highs and lows of a great contemporary book. I laughed and swooned and cried and felt those deep feels that only a truly great book can make you feel. It was everything I look for in a great book and to make matters better, it was a first novel.Open Road Summer is a book about friendship, boys and figuring it all out. It's the story of Reagan(one of my favorite fans by the way) and Dee, two girls that have been best friends since they were 8 and who couldn't be any more different. Reagan is the wild child, always getting in trouble while Dee is the professional with a country music contract. With a US summer tour happening for Dee and everything at home falling apart for Reagan the two of them embark on a road trip they won't soon forget. But when a scandal happens and Matt Finch, a former boy-bander gone solo, joins them, what started out as a drama free girls summer becomes something entirely different. As the girls navigate broken hearts and healing and moving forward they also hold on to the one thing they both know matters most, each other.I don't even know where to start my love fest, because let’s face it, that's what this review is going to be. I guess I'm going to start with the writing because without it you have nothing and Emery Lord gave a whole lot more than nothing. She gave this book everything. She wrote Open Road Summer not like a debut author, but like a seasoned pro. Everything, every single thing gave me the book feels and I'm still stunned by it. There were pages and pages of quotes I want to share but I'm going with just one: 'I would like to know you for a while.' That one simple sentence gave my tummy that flutter that I love getting when I read a good book. Lord has power in her words that made me believe what I was reading like I was a part of it as opposed to just looking in. She wrote pure magic whether she was describing the locations and the scenery or the feelings Reagan was having or the connection Dee and Reagan had.Actually the relationship of Dee and Reagan was one of my favorite parts of the book. It is very rare in YA for there to be a tight bond between friends. I always find the frienemy is used more often than the friend. As a person that has had some of her closest friends for 25-30 years it has always bothered me. But Lord has fixed that. She wrote a true, real friendship between Reagan and Dee. They were just like all friends. They had each other's backs, bickered, laughed, were jealous of one another, and even fought. That's what friends do. But friends also are there for one another and Dee and Reagan were no different. Their bond was so strong and true and a complete joy to read. Some of my favorite parts of the book were when it was just the two of them being goofy or hanging out with Matt in the tour bus.Oh and Matt! OMG, Matt Finch! Add another book boyfriend to the list because...SWOON! Seriously is it getting hot in here?!?! The boy is like Etienne St. Clair and Corey Livingston with a hint of Matthew McConaughey all wrapped in one. He had manners and sass and swagger. He was confident and boyish and charming. Basically the perfect package and Reagan's perfect match. There was something just so right about their banter and Matt in general. GAH, I don't want to give away too much of him awesomeness, but man is he awesome.So flat out, I loved Open Road Summer like I haven't loved a book in a long time. It's some of this books that transports you to summer days hanging with your best friend. To those feelings you get when you first develop a crush. It comes to life while you are reading it and just gives you all the feels you can barely handle. It's amazingly written, has great characters and a great plot. Emery Lord has now become an auto buy author for me after reading just one book and I think after you pick this one up you will feel the same. Thank you Reagan, Dee, Matt and Emery, thank you.

(Review originally posted on The Book Addict's Guide)I don’t even like country music but somehow I end up falling in love with books about them. I was in the middle of a few super heavy books and wanted to start something light to combat the book hangover I was about to have… Open Road Summer was the perfect feel-good book but… well, it also gave me a book hangover because it was just SO good!! I had heard SO many good things about this book from my fellow lovely blogger friends before I had started so as I usually am, I was a tiiiny but scared that the hype of it so far would make me not love it as much. Thank GOODNESS that wasn’t an issue. Really from start to finish, I enjoyed every aspect of OPEN ROAD SUMMER. From the characters to the plot to the places the book could have gone but thankfully didn’t… And every scene just felt so incredible and magical. I was pretty much swooning the whole time — and that was even before I got to read about Matt Finch!OPEN ROAD SUMMER follows Reagan as she spends the summer with her best friend Dee. And oh yeah, Dee just happens to be country superstar Lilah Montgomery and spending the summer together entails a 24 city concert tour. But this summer is exactly what Reagan needs to step away from her life and the decisions she needs to reconsider and try to start the next year with a clean slate. I really liked Reagan and I appreciated that she was really trying to turn her life around. She’s had some hard times in her life with her mother leaving their family when she was young and as much as she loves her dad, she isn’t a huge fan of her stepmom and they really just don’t get along. I absolutely loved the celebrity and music super star aspect of this story which is not something I really would have ever expected. I really felt like I got an insight into the “normal” side of the celebrity life. I feel like celebrities are so built up in our minds that we often forget that they’re just normal people and it was really interesting to see the other side of that. Dee (to her friends, Lilah to her fans) loves what she does but that doesn’t mean she leads an easy life. She works hard to maintain a good, clean image to appeal to children and adults alike, so when a misleading scandal hits the news, Dee’s publicist decides to invite long-time friend and all-around good guy Matt Finch to open for Dee on tour.Oh, Matt Finch. Count me in the Matt Finch fanclub for sure. I was nervous when we first met him, hearing that he had such a clean reputation and he didn’t even like lying even when helping out a friend — I was worried he would turn out to be a little too good for my tastes but don’t worry! There are many, many facets to Matt Finch and he easily had me swooning. Major swoons, guys. Major swoons. He and Reagan had such fantastic chemistry and don’t EVEN get me started on the forbidden romance aspect. It just KILLS me. See, part of the deal with Matt coming on tour is that he is supposed to be leading the press into thinking that he and Dee/Lilah are dating to help combat the bad press and rumors going around. Matt and Reagan have amazing chemistry but they can’t allow themselves to date because, well, Matt is supposed to come off as Lilah’s new love interest. AHHH. The tension. I died.Okay, I don’t want to give away the whole story, but it’s so hard to write all the things about this book and not just GUSH. I absolutely loved it with very, very minor issues involving Reagan’s former path of rebelling and self-destruction. Overall, I really loved the characters, loved the romance, and loved the entire feel of the book. Each scene just really felt so genuine and I really felt like I was experiencing it as well. It’s everything I could possibly imagine that the perfect summer would be like! Great friendships, great romances, great adventures. I could honestly gush about this book so much more, but I’ll leave you to go pick it up yourself… (Which I hope you’re doing as soon as you finish reading this. GO! It’s okay. I’ll wait.)

I bought this book for my last-minute summer holiday, since I too travelled to several states and I figured that a novel about a road trip would fit perfectly. The only place Emery Lord's meandering bore goes is nowhere, and not even fast.Liliah Montgomery is a well-behaved teenage girl-next-door country pop star (imagine the exact opposite of latter day Miley Cyrus) who takes her troubled best friend Reagan on tour as she travels across the US (on a rather ludicrous, non-linear path). Along the way they face difficulties such as gutter press smears, old loves and new loves and...and...that's all kiddies.There is a story, if irrelevant teen angst appeals to you, but there is no actual plot. There's absolutely nothing to keep you reading and I found this very difficult to get through. I wanted it to be a nice beach read but I just could not get interested in it and and instead just laid down and drifted away into my own thoughts. I want to say that the novel just stops rather than properly ending, but there's nothing to really stop. Emery Lord seems to suddenly attempt to make up for all this by adding an impromptu final chapter after the acknowledgements section, but it literally adds nothing, as there is nothing to add to. Each chapter features only the location as a title and this gimmick becomes obsolete for the last few chapters as the road trip ends and the novel stops going nowhere.There's a lot of good chick-lit summer fiction out there. This is not one of them. Avoid.

“God,” he mutters. “Most girls love it when I write them a song.”“Well, I’m not most girls,” I snap at him.*eye roll* Oh yeah, this is one of those.The more I consider every note I made for this book, the more I wonder if three stars is too generous. But I will stick to my initial instinct because there were things to really LOVE about this book. In fact, I was completely falling in love for at least the first quarter and I kept making excuses for it in my head even when everything started to go downhill. This was *almost* the wonderful Summer read I've been seeking, complete with friendship, romance and humour. Almost, though, doesn't quite cut it.This book started so well I thought it might get five stars. That's how strongly the opening chapters lured me in. The key things I liked about this book were: the central friendship between Reagan and Dee, the romantic interest - Matt, and the multitude of beautiful settings in this road trip. I felt like I could hear the opening chords of Keith Urban's Long Hot Summer as Reagan and Dee set out on the road after being introduced to the reader in a way that made me curious and instantly sympathetic towards the narrator. This book would have hardly revolutionized the YA Contemporary market, but it did seem to promise an enjoyable and memorable read.Despite my criticisms of this novel, I understand where the blogger hype stems from. But I could not like Reagan and, after a while, I didn't even have the energy to care about her. And no matter how good a book is, if you don't care about the protagonist, it will never be a complete hit. I get why she has issues and I used them to excuse a lot of her actions and thoughts for the first half of the book. I just don't think those issues justified her hating every single girl. Some of her inner dialogue was really annoying: "I can’t deny that she’s beautiful—but it’s such an uninteresting beautiful. Medium height, slender, with no features that particularly stand out. Beautiful but forgettable. Besides, based on the fact that she sold their breakup story to the tabloids, I assume she has the personality of a trash bag."The truth: Reagan became just like the majority of Contemporary Romance MCs - a girl with issues hates all other girls because she's so superior. And she almost always hates them for doing the stuff she also did, like obsessing over Matt and wearing revealing shirts. But it is true that this book was a compelling, well-written read that I devoured in no time at all, so I cannot be wholly negative. In short: I feel majorly conflicted.

This book was a really boring read for me, the main character is, frankly, a (not gonna swear) horrible person and a huge hypocrite. She claims other girls dress in scraps to look hot and lust after boys, when she-on numerous occassions- states how she wears revealing clothing. To be honest, she's a pain to like, and I don't know if she gets better throughout the book as I was only able to force myself to read 30% of it. (See what I mean). I feel like the author wanted to create a new, different kind of YA romance character, but it hasn't really worked that well, so please, do yourself a favour and shop for another, better book.THE ENNNNNDDDD!!!

Honestly, I was excited for this book, I love Emery Lord.All of her books are amazing and a nice read.At first - I loved this book- I thought this was going to be like the rest of her books.It was not.Don't get me wrong , it was decent, but it isn't like her other books .Overall- this is okay but not amazing.

A book that you get lost in. Thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend.